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China’s Virus Death Toll Nears 1,500

China’s official death toll from the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, is set to reach 15-hundred, while the number of confirmed cases approaches 65-thousand after authorities changed their diagnostic criteria.

According to China’s state-run CCTV on Friday, Hubei Province, the epicenter of the contagious virus, reported 116 deaths and four-thousand-823 new infections on Thursday.

The province, which accounts for more than 80 percent of overall Chinese infections, now includes “clinically diagnosed cases” in the number of confirmed diagnoses.

It means confirmed cases now include those with a CT scan showing an infected lung, rather than relying only on the standard nucleic acid tests.

Of the new figures in Hubei, eight deaths and three-thousand-95 patients are such clinically diagnosed cases.

China’s National Health Commission announced that as of 12 a.m. Thursday, the overall death toll from COVID-19 stood at one-thousand-367 and the number of cases reached 59-thousand-804.